Funding Need – Hollybourne Cottage Exhibits
With preservation work nearing completion on the first floor of Hollybourne Cottage, Jekyll Island Authority’s Historic Resources staff developed new exhibitry design plans hoping to fabricate and install the exhibits over the next year. These new exhibits will enable guests to meet Charles Stewart Maurice and his family and imagine what it would have been like to live, visit, or work in their Gilded Age Home. Visitors will also explore the home’s unique architecture and ongoing efforts to preserve Hollybourne Cottage.
Your gifts directly support exhibit fabrication and installation.
History
Hollybourne Cottage, built for the Maurice family in 1890, is one of the oldest historic buildings in the Jekyll Island Club National Historic Landmark District. It provides a unique opportunity to help tell Jekyll Island’s story and engage visitors in the preservation and conservation of this island.
Charles Stewart Maurice and his wife Charlotte dearly loved Jekyll Island, and their large family vacationed at the Jekyll Island Club throughout its existence. Maurice was a founding member of the Jekyll Island Club in 1886. From 1890 until 1942, Hollybourne Cottage was the Maurice family’s home away from home. They were one of the first families to build a cottage at the Jekyll Island Club in 1890 and stayed on the island until the very end of the Club Era.
Hollybourne’s imaginative architecture reflects the professional talent of the Maurice family patriarch. Charles Stewart Maurice was a successful bridge builder and used his knowledge of bridge-building techniques to create a cottage unlike any other.
As a partner of Kellogg & Maurice and the Union Bridge Company, Charles Stewart Maurice helped to construct many road and railway bridges that became part of the historic fabric of their communities. By the time Maurice retired in 1895, he had helped traverse many of the nation’s major waterways and had been instrumental in the construction of major landmarks around the country.
Hollybourne Cottage is one of his many unique creations. The fabulous 12,600 square-foot vacation retreat was designed to be an architectural wonder of its own. Designed by architect William H. Day and owner Charles Stewart Maurice in 1890, it is uniquely engineered, incorporating bridge engineering techniques, such as suspension trusses and stepped piers. Hollybourne is also the only Club Cottage to be built of tabby, a local building material created from a mixture of lime, sand, oyster shells, and water.
In its original condition, the vacation retreat was a much-loved haven for Mr. and Mrs. Maurice, their eight children, and a large household staff. The Maurice family made an annual pilgrimage to Jekyll Island, where they enjoyed a whirlwind of entertainments and explored the island’s simple pleasures.
Mr. Maurice and his wife shared a passion for the natural and cultural history of the island. Mr. Maurice was considered an expert on the island’s wildlife and both he and his wife were known as the island’s early historians and preservationists. The family also documented the home and their time on Jekyll through photographs, diaries, and inventories that have provided incredible insight into life at the Jekyll Island Club.
